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Comments:

Tisha
11:18 PM Sat 10/1/2011

Clear, informaitve, simple. Could I send you some e-hugs?

Scott Verner
10:11 AM Mon 3/15/2010

Thank you for your kind mention of South Wing! (BTW, we&#39;re back together and playing from time to time in the Triangle area.) So where is Pauline now? sverner@charlotteobserver.com

Alex Webb
9:37 AM Wed 1/20/2010

Pauline,<br \><br \>Thanks for posting this story. My wife Carolyn and I visited Springfield shortly after you opened and Richard recommended an album and said if we didn&#39;t like it, he&#39;d give us our money back, it was from a little band called Fleetwood Mac. We bought an album every week on payday.<br \><br \>You mentioned about having a baby in May of 1976, and we did too (she now lives in the area and we have a grand-daughter).<br \><br \>My wife says she sees you occassionally around town.<br \><br \>Hope you are doing well,<br \><br \>Carolyn and Alex

Sally Hunter
10:39 AM Thu 1/7/2010

I seem to recall that Buffalo Records had a fantastic logo. Do you have a photo of it?

Jim Cox
9:28 PM Wed 1/6/2010

I just want to tell you that Chapel Hill Memories rocks. Your content is fabulous.<br \>I lived in Chapel Hill for 31 years, and learned more about the town in two hours on your blog than the whole time I lived there.

Keith Graham
2:53 PM Wed 1/6/2010

From the story it seems that within five years Pauline and Richard opened and closed three record stores. Looking back on it does Pauline see a way they could have made a profit and remained in business?<br \><br \>What was the main problem with the business - high rents, poor management, not enough business, or something else?

Fran Martin
9:14 AM Wed 1/6/2010

My father use to talk glowingly about Buffalo and Springfield Records. I wish he was still alive to read this article. It really sounds like they were incredible music stores. I wish Chapel Hill had a store like that today.

Brian Chamberlain
9:07 PM Tue 1/5/2010

I loved the original Springfield. It was in the Carl Smith Building on Columbia Street. I think before that the Pickwick Restaurant had used that space for bands like the New Deal String Band to perform.<br \><br \>Pauline, do you know what has become of Stu Martel?<br \>Thanks for all the albums that I could afford to buy because of you.

Donnie Warren
5:41 PM Tue 1/5/2010

I was at UNC during the time of Buffalo Records. I remember Richard Carter as a high energy person. I was told then that they often sold their records at or below cost. Great for us consumers, but not I suspect for business.

Tom Griffith
5:09 PM Tue 1/5/2010

I can not believe my luck; an article on my three favorite record stores of all time. I don&#39;t think I knew then that they were all owned by the same people. <br \><br \>What does Pauline Williams do today?

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Chapel Hill Memories:

Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.

What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.

-- Charles Kuralt

Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".

There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.

The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.

The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.

William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.

The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.

Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.

Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.

The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.

Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.

Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.